


Handwritten from the Heart

by floralathena



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Multi, Peggy Carter/Angie Martinelli (Mentioned) - Freeform, Riley/Sam Wilson (Mentioned), Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 09:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8483344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floralathena/pseuds/floralathena
Summary: "When Steve Rogers is born, his mother cries. The midwife rushes him to a neighborhood doctor and the tired, overworked, and underpaid man gazes at dusty floorboards as he says that little Steven Rogers may not make it through the night. Sarah prays and begs and pleads to every deity she’s ever heard of. Nine hours later, she thanks the doctor and holds her little boy, her miracle, close to the beautiful scrawl on her chest that had named Steve Rogers before he was even born. Her sweet son has the smallest matching script  that says Sarah Rogers, and it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen."





	

When Steve Rogers is born, his mother cries. The midwife rushes him to a neighborhood doctor and the tired, overworked, and underpaid man gazes at dusty floorboards as he says that little Steven Rogers may not make it through the night. Sarah prays and begs and pleads to every deity she’s ever heard of. Nine hours later, she thanks the doctor and holds her little boy, her miracle, close to the beautiful scrawl on her chest that had named _Steve Rogers_ before he was even born. Her sweet son has the smallest matching script that says _Sarah Rogers_ , and it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

A few days later, when the name _Bucky Barnes_ emerges in a sloppy scrawl over his heart, twice as large as her own name, Sarah cries once more with both fear and relief for the boy who owns her heart.

The first time Steve tries to enlist, the name _Peggy Carter_ blooms onto his collarbone in what is both the sharpest and the most elegant handwriting Steve has ever seen. When Bucky sees it, he claps Steve on the back, makes a joke about how ladies love a man in uniform, and gives Steve a lame excuse about having to help a guy he works with move his new wife’s stuff into their place. Bucky makes a beeline for the cheapest, sleaziest bar in the neighborhood where nobody will know him, and resolves not to go home until he’s too drunk to talk. He idly rubs his chest as he sits on a barstool, his index finger tracing the name Steve Rogers until it goes numb. Bucky’s only other names belong to his sisters, and they’re tiny, each squeezed onto a single finger. Steve’s name covers half of his chest, always has and always will, claiming Bucky’s heart.

Bucky stumbles home at three in the morning smelling of whiskey and collapses onto the couch that used to belong to Sarah Rogers, and Steve’s heart breaks.

On a dreary night, Peggy Carter finds Captain America attempting to drown his sorrows in a bombed-out bar. It occurs to her that the soldiers who mocked his overtly patriotic posters would likely relate to this image rather easily. As she stands amid the rubble and watches the man she loves, who loves her (but could never live without him, a dark part of her mind whispers), she notices something on the back of Steve’s neck. She asks. He answers. Steve doesn’t want to know what it says. He can’t accept that losing the man he loves more than anyone could lead to another bond. Peggy holds his hand, and eventually holds his large, sobbing form against her heart. Peggy remembers how she felt when she received the telegram about her brother’s death and immediately gained a name on her collarbone. She thinks that _Nat_ must have known terrible pain in their life, or soon would, if they wore Steve’s name upon their body.

Peggy loses the man she loves for a second time, gains a new name, wonders if people can die before meeting their bonds, and feels very strongly that her heart may shatter before she lives to meet _Angie Martinelli_.

In her deceptively short life, Natasha (or Natalia, or Natalie, or any other name under the sun) has known everything about names. She’s taken on many, memorized dozens of aliases and fake friends and boyfriends and girlfriends and grandparents and cousins. She doesn’t know why _Clint Barton_ is on her skin until she’s nearly taken out with an arrow and learns what SHIELD stands for. She’s even more confused when she signs a contract and the name of a dead man marks a target on the back of her neck. Until she learns that Captain America has been unearthed, she refuses to wear her hair up. Once she has, it’s a long journey from their first meeting to writing down “old guy” jokes on a notepad while Steve and Clint discuss old comics. When she writes the word “fossil,” she and Steve both suck in a quick breath as _Sam Wilson_ weaves its way along their hipbones. Natasha (or Nat) thinks that Sam Wilson must be either a very broken or a very patient person.

In her darker moments, Nat hates herself for hoping for both- hoping for a soldier, somebody who knows the horrors of battle, of losing parts of yourself, yet has divined some way to be okay again.

For a solid month, Sam Wilson thinks that he must have lost what few marbles he had left. Then he meets a living legend or three, and decides that he’s most certainly devoid of marbles. He sees Captain America’s bare chest and it reads more like an obituary page in the paper than a list of loved ones, though he supposes they can be one and the same. He lives, he nearly dies, but he helps people and Sam would take on whatever he needed to if he could save everybody. A bomb goes off and a traumatised young girl who did what she could is called a weapon of mass destruction, and Sam feels both love and hatred more intensely that he ever has before.

The Winter Soldier reveals some of Bucky Barnes again, Peggy Carter is laid to rest, Nat does what she can to help them, T’Challa weaves its way down his spine, and this time, Sam isn’t afraid.

Steve sees _Riley_ over Sam’s heart, right where Bucky claims his, and for the first time since 1942, he cries with a friend and feels vulnerable and loved all at once.

Sam thinks that maybe, someday, they might be okay again.


End file.
